


Marks

by Morpheus626



Series: Papillon San Fran AU [2]
Category: Papillon (2018)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:53:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25041964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morpheus626/pseuds/Morpheus626
Summary: Another piece of the San Fran AU, in which Papi buys a house and Louis gets to indulge his love of art to make a house a home.
Relationships: Henri "Papillon" Charriere/Louis Dega
Series: Papillon San Fran AU [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1813576
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	Marks

They had a budget, a limit, and Louis had trusted him with it. This wasn’t even the top of the limit, yet he was shaking as he led Louis up the path to the front door. San Francisco was expensive, and he knew Louis knew that too, but still…

“If you hate it, we can still back out. I sign the last bit of paperwork tomorrow; we’d lose a little bit of money, not enough to stop me if you don’t want this.” 

Louis pulled the blindfold off, and took in the front of the house. It was small, but he thought it would be to Louis’ taste. 

“I like it.” 

The weight was only half gone off Papi’s shoulders with that. “Good. I’m glad. Now, the inside-” 

Louis was inside before he could get another word out, and he could see the disappointment in his shoulders as they slumped. 

“Well. A bit plain inside, but-” 

“That’s where you come in! If you want, I mean; I had an idea, is the thing,” Papi interrupted, and pulled Louis gently to the sitting room. “You could paint, if you wanted to, I thought…” 

He’d bought actual supplies, nothing like what Louis had been forced to use on Devil’s Island. No matter what Louis said, he knew how much he wanted to keep working on his art, though he rarely gave himself time to do it. 

“I’m not go-” 

“Don’t you say it,” Papi interrupted him again. “You are. And if you had to force me to choose only one way to decorate our home, and it was between your art and anything else, I would choose your art. Every time.” 

Louis smiled, but it was a nervous one as he glanced about the many blank white walls. “This will take ages though, surely-” 

“I can be patient, especially when I know it will be well worth it,” Papi didn’t want to keep interrupting Louis, but he could just hear the excuses Louis had floating about his head to stop himself from being able to do this, to have fun making their house beautiful. 

“And what will I tell my job?” 

“This doesn’t all need to be done in a week, or a month, or even a year. You don’t work weekends, and if you want, a day off to stay at home and paint if you want or even just, you know, relax, would be good for you.” 

Louis nodded. “Okay.” 

“To the painting? Or to just the house?” 

“To all of it,” Louis replied softly, kneeling down to inspect the various paints and brushes on the sitting room floor. “Can I start tomorrow night?” 

He couldn’t keep the smile off his face. “Of course. As soon as we get home.” 

“What about our things?” 

“I can move all that,” Papi said. It was no second thought to him, and he was more than happy to move everything they owned while Louis painted. 

“Even the couch?” 

Papi nodded. 

“The couch that the two of us couldn’t get in the apartment alone?” 

He nodded again.

“The couch that we had to get three strangers off the street to help us fit into the apartment because of how awkward and heavy it was?” 

“Louis,” Papi sighed. “I’ll be fine.” 

Louis shook his head and laughed as he stood back up and turned to Papi. “Let me help with the couch, at least. I can’t paint if I’m taking you to the hospital because you’ve hurt yourself moving it.” 

“If you insist,” Papi said. “But you could do a mural of our moving in, and include that in it.” 

“Oh yes, the grand mural on the first wall when you come in,” Louis snickered. “Yes, here’s the bit where you can see my husband nearly breaking his back moving our couch.” 

That stopped him cold for a moment. “Husband?” 

They had exchanged rings, but neither had used the phrase, and they hadn’t really ever addressed why. For Papi, it was because he felt bad it wasn’t legal. He knew there wasn’t a way to make it so, but he knew Louis would have been happier if it could have been. He worried about things like death and how the other would survive after, if they would have access to each other’s funds and things, if their bodies could be released to one another to plan a funeral. Without marriage, legally, none of that could happen. So he didn’t use the word, to avoid making Louis think about it. 

“Yes,” Louis replied. “I should have been saying that long ago, even before we got the rings. I was…being silly. Wanting things we can’t have, and completely looking past all that we do have. Maybe it will be a mess, later on, when one of us…” 

He could tell Louis wanted to look away, but he didn’t. The tears sat in the corners of his eyes, but didn’t fall, and his gaze didn’t break. 

“Anyway. I’m sorry, for not using it sooner. And now, especially, I should be. My husband bought us a house!” 

“Technically we both bought a house,” Papi clarified. “You contributed just as much money as I did.” 

“True, but it could only be in one of our names, and it’s in yours,” Louis said, and brushed away the tears before nearly leaping into Papi’s arms. “So, my husband bought me a house.” 

“And my husband is going to make it beautiful,” Papi murmured as he gave Louis a soft kiss. “Can you believe they left this place so…” 

“Dull? Ugly? Boring? Blank?” 

“Yes,” Papi agreed. “There’s so much they could have done with this place.” 

“We’ll fix it,” Louis said. “I’ve got ideas…” 

**

And ideas he did have. The first night in their new home he spent covered in paint in the sitting room, the furniture (including their heavy couch) moved to the center to be out of the way. At first it was just patterns, nothing overwhelming, but at the same time eye-catching and enticing to sit and stare at, curlicues and circular moving lines, intersecting and crossing one another in a way that Papi knew had a great deal of thought and technique behind it, but he couldn’t explain it if he tried. They were in light yellow and green, the paint dotting Louis’ skin, a gorgeous contrast that marked him with his art, marked the house as theirs, a mark of not just ownership but love. 

In the weeks to follow, it was shocking how much he got done. Papi would watch Louis come home, only to give him a quick kiss before dashing to change into his painting clothes and racing into the latest room he was working on. He missed spending their evenings as they had done before (usually both with a book, laying across each other in a tangle on the couch until it was time for bed), but this was good too. 

It was like watching math in action, Papi thought. All calculated lines and structure, but that flowed so softly and loosely that you could forget the cold calculations behind it for a moment or two, and take in how it all came together. A room of butterflies in blue and purple in their bedroom, a mixture of stripes and eyes like those on the backs of butterfly wings in the dining room, abstract flowing lines through the kitchen that showed up in other rooms as well, tying one room to another as if Louis sought to stitch the house together. 

And it was utterly perfect, but he didn’t get a chance to tell Louis that until he finally reached the last room, much sooner than Papi had anticipated. 

“Before you go,” Papi said softly, gently grabbing Louis’ arm as he started to charge into the guest room. “I wanted to tell you-” 

“I can make any changes you want,” Louis said, and up went his hand to nervously adjust his already mis-adjusted glasses. 

“What? No,” Papi said. “I love it all. I wanted to tell you. I don’t know quite how you do it, like you do.” 

“You’ve done your fair share of art.” 

“Perhaps, but this is different,” Papi replied. “You got done in weeks what I figured would take at least a year. And it’s all gorgeous, and I don’t know how you made it all happen like you did. It seems effortless.” 

Louis giggled, and ran a hand through the soft curls he was finally growing out, at Papi’s persistence, the same curls he’d helped wash paint out of the past few weeks, when Louis somehow managed to get it on them. “Effortless is…a very kind thing to call it.” 

“I know you’ve worked incredibly hard,” Papi said. “But you make it look easy.” 

“Want to watch me finish up?” 

“I’d like that.” 

The guest room was rich, red and purple jewel tones with gold. It made him think of the lush wallpapers from the fancier hotels in Paris, though none of them could ever beat what Louis was doing. 

He’d again gone for butterflies, a theme that Papi more than loved, but this time a singular line of them, all shaped fully but connected and made with one purple line, flowing up and down in flight across the red walls, with gold accents upon them in unique designs. It was warm, and easy to get lost in as he laid on the bare mattress they’d tossed in the center of the room until they could afford to better furnish the guest room. He ended up too lost, too relaxed, so that he jumped when Louis dropped down next to him on the mattress suddenly. 

“You’re half asleep,” Louis teased. “Is watching me paint so boring?” 

Papi shook his head. “Soothing.” 

He could feel the half-dried spots of paint on Louis’ hands and all over his clothes as Louis snuggled in close to him, but he didn’t mind. On the contrary, he wanted it. To be marked, to be covered in the colors of their new home, their new life, finally getting on track like they’d always said it would be after they escaped. 

Louis would draw up the tattoo designs later. “Do you really want another butterfly tattoo?” Yes, he did, and he knew exactly how he wanted it. The line to create the butterfly on his body matched up to where the one making Louis’ started, so if they laid together, side by side, the lines flowed together, connecting them both, the same rich purple and gold from the guest room. 

Marks of their new life, there forever, long after the drops of paint would be cleaned from their skin. 


End file.
